11 Easy Nonprofit Fundraisers, Great Results Right Now!

by Thomas R. Reich PhD

1) Super Healthy Smoothie Event – Get a table or stand at the local fair, farmers market, church bazaar or flea market and sell fresh in-season fruit smoothies. Have the fruit and other ingredients donated and have all your members and volunteers bring blenders. You can even have local celebrities volunteer as super smoothie makers for an easy nonprofit fundraiser!

2) Embarrass the Director Event! – Have donors and staff pay a dollar a vote, with no limit on the number of votes they can buy, to decide from a list of 5 embarrassing fates for your good natured director. Their fate could be shaving all facial hair, die hair an embarrassing color, wear a clown suit for a day, trade jobs for a day with volunteers, clean the floor of the local city hall, etc. The possibilities are endless for this easy nonprofit fundraiser and only you know what can bring in the most votes.

3) 50/50 Raffle – This is a no brainier You get a local printer to donate professional looking raffle tickets and sell chances to win for, say $1 each, with no limit to the number of tickets that can be purchased. Here is the hook, the prize is ½ the total intake of funds on this easy nonprofit fundraiser. This way you can periodically announce the size of the prize as it grows, and there is no chance of your organization losing money or insulting a donor because of low ticket sales for the prize they donated!

4) A Seasonal Gift Wrap – The hook here is to set up gift wrapping tables for events other than Christmas in local high traffic shopping centers and malls. Examples of events for this easy nonprofit fundraiser are Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Secretary’s Day. Again, the possibilities are endless and the free advertising you may get from the mall or shopping center could be stellar!

5) Holiday Email Fun! – In the past, Western Union would send special messages for a fee to loved ones at various events and holidays. This elegant luxury is mostly lost today, but with this easy nonprofit fundraiser you can sell donors the chance for a personalized card to be sent to a loved one with an added gift that the donation made to send the E-card is credited to the recipient as a donation to your organization made by the sender in the receivers name.

6) Mystery Admirer- This event can be a lot of fun. Each donor has a personal note delivered to someone they secretly admire, or someone they openly admire. Here is the catch in this easy nonprofit fundraiser, the one who is delivered the anonymous note must make a set donation to find out who the admirer is, this donation includes a return message; it could go on all day!

7) Mile of Change – In this vary easy nonprofit fundraiser, the organization buys many roles of masking tape and presents the tape in varying lengths to local businesses. The idea is to stick coins of 1 cent up to 50 cents to the tape – end to end. The business that makes the longest strip of tape full of coins wins a nice donated prize. As an added option, have 3 or 4 prizes available, but only if the prizes are donated.

8) Skip a Meal for Hunger – Donors agree to donate at least the value of 1 nice meal and in exchange they skip the meal to demonstrate their solidarity to stamp out hunger in this easy nonprofit fundraiser.

9) Sell Casual Day! – Work with local businesses to get donations from their employees and get the sponsor companies involved to make it a competition for the highest level of donations. The winning companies get an unscheduled casual day, possibly all participating sponsor companies will win if a high enough funds are gathered. This easy nonprofit fundraiser costs nothing, encourages friendly competition, and gets the most dedicated employees a fun cost free brake; win/win!

10) Give to Give it up! – Sponsors donate a minimum amount that can be put up to encourage the victim to participate, to have a friend or boss give up an annoying habit. In this easy nonprofit fundraiser, wives can donate to have husbands agree to not smoke, employees to have a boss shave or weir a T-shirt, the possibilities are endless.

11) Helicopter golf! – Sell Golf balls for $10 each with a unique number, then, send them all up in a helicopter which will then hover over a hole on a local golf course. All the balls are dropped from 500 ft and the one closest to the whole wins. Alternatively, have 3 or even 10 prizes, but all prizes must be donated. If you don’t have access to a helicopter, you can get the local fire department to hover the tall cage over the hole, it is all just good fun after all. This may not be a really easy nonprofit fundraiser, but remember, this kind of event does not happen every day, milk as much publicity for your cause and the donor golf course as possible, maybe even organize a golf tournament around it, but that is a different blog!

We would love to talk to you about setting you Website and Social Media Network up to be world class among Non-profits everywhere! Our methods are unparalleled and success with search engine results win every time. Contact Dr. Reich directly at Director1@gmail.com with any questions you may have, or contact our commercial end of the company YourPMA.com by clicking the button below. See some of the work we have done, some of the successes we have had, from Pop stars to major Charities, we have done it all. Our goal is always to make you visible, and get you noticed. The rest is up to you!

Content Marketing Ideas That Attract Targeted Traffic

By: Thomas R. Reich PhD

Today, the best and most cost effective form of marketing is Content Marketing and great Content Marketing Ideas. Many times, even the best websites begin to get stale, with content that becomes repetitive, themes and keywords that become over used, so what can be done to keep a content rich website fresh?

We have developed 6 key content marketing ideas that can be powerful and at the same time freshen up that stale website. Really good Content Marketing Ideas are important to become an information source, an “expert site” and a celebrity of sorts in your industry. These ideas can help freshen up your existing online content library without re-inventing the wheel.

Successful Content Marketing Focuses on One Expertise, and Variations of that Theme:

The universe of Content Marketing Ideas is vast, it would be impossible to read even 1% of what is available on the internet in a lifetime. That leaves you in a predicament; how do you and your informational portal get found in that vast universe of information? The answer is simple; you get found in that vast universe of businesses by making your firm’s information portal unique with original content marketing ideas that are consistent and relate to your product or service.

In business you specialize and find a niche that fulfills a need. Content Marketing Ideas for your website must find a niche, and fulfill information needs. Once found it is important to fill that niche with every angle and every fact that covers that niche of information. Become the one best place for information on that niche, your firms area of unique expertise, an area of expertise that leads to your product or service as a solution to unique problems discussed in regards to that information which you have created as a service to humanity. Starting to get the picture?

Some business websites, in their attempt to become the one true source of information on a particular niche, give free video training, white papers even eBooks on that narrow niche. This goes beyond directly promoting the information portal and creates advocates in the internet world sending potential customers to your website to get the free material, prospects you never would have reached otherwise.

Email marketing can bring potential clients to your information rich website, and instead of being bombarded with “Buy my stuff.” They find the answers they were looking for. When it is time to buy a product or service that is a solution to their problem, who are they more likely to buy from? You, who has provided answers and information, positioning you as an expert in the field, or go back to the internet and search randomly for a solution that would come from a site without any detailed understanding of their problem.

Another great method to make you the information niche leader is to actually establish an information forum. That is a place where a community can develop around your niche expertise and discuss problems openly with each other. This gives you an opportunity to comment and recommend as a member of the group, rather than as a sales force. It is possible to develop a large following that will bring many others to your website, with little or no effort on your part.

What all of these things have in common is consistency, stay on topic in everything you do, everything you represent, all your social media, social sharing and every blog, and rigidly branded to your logo and colors.

If your narrow niche is Real-estate agents who are frequently driving to properties, you could introduce a series of pod casts that may help grow your community of followers. Also this real-estate website trying to be an information portal, would by definition, have to have a responsive site, a website that converts automatically to maximize viability on any device – be it phone, tablet, laptop or desktop.

Remember, do one thing well, concentrate on one narrow topic, be consistent, be relevant and be branded in all things. Have an active social media network and social sharing network; shear both new entries and occasionally the popular old entries. Make sure to update all information as the market and conditions change, even update the oldest pages of information from time to time and re-share.

Do all this, stay on target and your targeted traffic will grow consistently month to month.

Keep all Content Marketing Ideas Consistent with Your Established Party Line on all Issues, But Keep it Coming:

All Blogs and information content pages need to keep consistent ideas about what you are an expert in. By this we mean, if it is your company’s opinion that Red is the established color for a particular road stripe, then all information presented on that website needs to be consistently in support of Red used as color for that particular road stripe. If a law changes, or your position on Red changes, make sure all information on your website is changed to reflect that change in law or opinion. Leaving conflicting information will not only make your website inconsistent and confusing, and instead of being a reliable expert site, it becomes a place to avoid because of inconsistencies.

As your website becomes full of information and you reach 100s of pages of information, it is a great temptation to feel that’s enough information, and stop adding new information. Adding new information on a consistent basis is not only important to keep visitors returning, it also affects those rankings you have worked so hard to achieve. A website with no information for even a month becomes stale in the “eyes” of the Google, Yahoo and Bing’s Spiders, and after 2 months of inactivity, the sight is down-graded by search engines no matter how much information it contains.

I have dealt with many customers that after we built a great expert site with consistent information and posted consistently over a long period of time that, after differing periods of time, felt, “We can do this ourselves.” Unfortunately, after a month or two they stopped, possibly because it got boring. After several months of inactivity, a very popular website became stale and loses its consistent visitors. Even worse, it gets downgraded by the search sites, and soon the site is dead in the water. It is very important, if you are not a writer and do not enjoy researching and creating the consistent content on your websites chosen expertise, you should hire someone to keep the website fresh.

Content Marketing Ideas must be fresh and consistent. If they are, you will have success with building and maintaining an information portal or expert site for your product or service. That said, Content Marketing is slow going at first and is hard to define ROI from the growing content. These 2 factors make it hard to stick with a consistent long term Content Marketing Ideas program. This is human nature, but a consistent program carried out over time will increase your ROL, and a poorly maintained “Expert Website” will hurt your ROI over time.

The bottom line is to be consistent with the material you add to your Expert Website, and be consistent with postings and promotions of new and old blogs. Read over your older material, if it no longer applies to your companies party line, remove it, if it is just a few lines that are not consistent, change those lines to reflect your most recent position.

Finally, be prepared to spend time, money and effort to create and maintain a true information portal that, eventually, makes you famous in your market. Consistency will bring you increased and verifiable ROI over time by using fresh content marketing ideas every month or even more frequently. Once you start building your information content rich website, do not stop, always be reviewing, adding new material, and you will see your expert website grow into something to be truly proud of!

With Content Marketing Ideas More is Best

If you have not added to your legitimate Content Marketing Ideas in several months, in other words, some new fresh perspective on the chosen narrow expertise of the website, you must add content, or find someone reliable to do it for you or with you.

Don’t lose perspective, once your website has become an information portal or expert site, it is tempting to stop adding material. Do not fall into this trap, a website should be looked at as a living breathing thing, adding fresh material at least once a month keeps it fresh in the eyes of the search engines and with your frequent visitors. Remember Content Marketing Ideas develop over time, your targeted audience grows over time, and as it grows your results will grow exponentially, be patient and consistent.

Inject new team members and new information sources to keep your content coming and to keep it fresh, and don’t let inspiration fizzle out. More pages are better, the more good information that stays on topic and is branded to you, for example white papers, videos and blogs, that stay on topic, the stronger you grow as an information destination on that targeted need for information.

As content increases you will see an increase in true legitimate comments and questions. Make sure to answer these questions on the site and respond to the comments, to encourage personal contact with those commenters as a commenter. Remember that whether it is good or bad, they are a prospect, and giving correct answers can get the business. If there is a complaint, make sure to use it as an opportunity to clear up a misconception.

Do not copy and paste blogs from similar sites and post on your site, this is not only plagiarism, but will seriously hurt your standings with Google and Bing and Yahoo for posting unauthorized duplicate content. A guest blog from another site can be good if it is on topic and is truly original material, unique to your website and your website only. Get inspiration and ideas from other blogs, as they say, “there are no original ideas,” but be unique in the way you execute that information.

There are many ways to increase the volume of output to your website, without compromising consistency or quality. It is a good rule of thumb that Google, Bing and Yahoo will probably not notice your website until your website contains at least 50 pages of tagged consistent information, 100 pages gets some traffic, 200 pages and you start to hum along, and when you reach 500 pages, you will have truly arrived.

Remember, this volume must be achieved over months, and years, for 500 or more pages sometimes close to a decade. Here are a few ways to speed up the volume of your pages of information.

Post blogs more frequently, if you post once a month, increase that to twice or three times a month.

Longer blogs are better, when it comes to getting search engine attention, if you are doing blogs 400 words or less in length, that should be a press release, they should be 800 to 1000 words as a good minimum to shoot for.

If you don’t use pictures, start including lots of them, make sure they are tagged to your key word and have an explanation that matches your narrow information portal, also URL link them to your home page of the blog itself.

Try imbedding a video that is on topic, and if from YouTube, you have an endless choice to pick from and you are helping the video creator with views on their video while providing your reader with video reinforcement to what you are trying to teach or explain.

Experiment with info graphics, they can take time to create, but they take up a lot of space, and count as more pages. Info graphics also add a lot of interest to a blog which matches the subject of the info graphic. It may even be fun to use other sources of info graphics with permission, and since it is viewed as a picture in most cases, it is not duplicate material.

When you increase output of material on your website, stay on topic and keep it all branded to our standard logo and colors, you will see increased activity. If you are doing things correctly, you will have success. If you provide a unique information service in a consistent manner and on a regular basis, the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo will send you more and more traffic.

It is Absolutely Essential that One Person or Firm be in Charge of the Blog Site – No Unauthorized Entries

It is important that your blog take on a character, one that speaks to your growing audience in a friendly and inviting way, in many cases using first person terms. The regular readers must see consistency, they need to be able to see the face of the blog talking to them, to build a loyal following.

Years ago, I was a professional and very successful music producer. I always told the artist, “sell yourself sell the group, the hits will sell themselves.” When people come to your website, and enjoy the style as well as the way information is displayed, they will be back. Make sure what they see next month is of the same nature.

You see how I related a small part of my past in that last paragraph? When you add a personal touch, just a drop, from time to time, the reader begins to feel they know you, and that is the very definition of keeping it fresh. If you ever get a message saying “when are you posting again?”, or “what happened to enter personal comment?” you have got the beginnings of a growing loyal audience.

In many cases, you were taught how to write for a corporation, stilted and stuffy, perfect and never in first person. It is important that you not be too corporate in your internet blogging, use first person and keep it a little personal. When a reader feels they are talking or listening to you, and the like what they read, they will be back. Finally, always stay professional, keep everything branded and stay on topic.

Some tips for finding that right person for the face of your blog:

Finding a grammar and spelling wiz is great for the proofing stage, since your blogs should always be proofed and proofed again. However, the writer needs to be creative and smart, not necessarily a perfect speller, we all have our strengths, find the best creative writer and get a great proofer!

Let that one person run with the direction and character of the blog, but you should read and approve of content. Make sure facts are straight and pictures are appropriate, it is still your company’s blog.

Let the blog master express opinion, relate personal but appropriate things, and complain about market conditions in a positive way. They can express points of view that follow company line but with a twist and express a unique personality. Basically, you can give your content some personality and, in the process, break it out of the typical corporate sounding boring rut.

When hiring a marketing firm or content creation firm; commit for a period of time, it will take 3-6 months to see any real results, give them a chance to prove their worth, let them develop a personality to your blog and your content marketing ideas.

Freelance writers can go rogue, even after great success they can just up and quit on you. Make sure you choose a consistent, reliable and affordable blog master, then stick with them and let them guide your ship for a while; give it a good chance for success.

Expect and use the terms I and Me in the blog, this gives the firm plausible deniability in the case that an opinion becomes different from a customer’s position.

Content Marketing Ideas Must Have a Narrow Focus

This is in essence, a review of the first 4 suggestions and a reinforcement of what makes Content Marketing Ideas into Content Marketing Success. Pick one narrow niche of knowledge, research that area of expertise and make sure it is an area that compliments your product or service. Then exploit that area of knowledge with blogs, white papers, pictures, info graphics and videos.

Stay on topic, be about one area of knowledge, add to that knowledge base every day, week, month and year, to stay consistent and be successful.

Many say they will run out of things to talk about with a narrow topic of information. In actuality this is not the case, by focusing on one area of expertise, you can research deeper, ferret more and more data out, report on the newest developments and with a little luck become one of the absolute best locations in the WWW for information on that topic. Can you see how that may bring you targeted traffic?

The deeper you get into your topic, the more you can research it and nurture the data you have found, use the facts and the side stories, and the more you find to write about. Data never ends, and when a website is done right, it will not get stale. The website will grow in stature and interest to its ever growing number of visitors.

If You Have a Scattered Website, Now is the Time to Change

If you have a website that gets little or no traffic it could be 1 of 2 things: Either you have chosen a topic no one is searching for or you have a scattered site without direction or consistency, possibly with less than 50 pages of information. You now have an idea what needs to be done to freshen it up.

Get some help from experts, pick a topic or even a different angle on a topic to freshen up a website that has been blogging on 1 topic with no success. For those that have just been posting blogs with no consistency, pick a topic and get started anew, it takes time but it does not take forever to see real tangible ROI results to this Content Marketing Ideas approach of website management.

These last pieces of advice are a whole different topic, but research your keywords to find the best keywords to affect searches of those looking for information contained on your information portal. Keywords help focus more on what your website is about, and helps search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo bring the targeted traffic you are looking for, right to your information. With the right Content Marketing Ideas, over time built into a true expert website, you will find the targeted traffic brought to your doorstep more efficiently than any other form of marketing that exists today.

Conclusion:

Boredom will happen if you do all the work on your own website, unless you are not only a content writer, but someone that genuinely enjoys the writing experience. There is an alternative, you can hire a firm like YourPMA.com and enjoy the help of a team that loves to market, understands consistency, and enjoys their work. There are many more aspects to online marketing that go into a successful Knowledge source website, but content consistency is top on the list. I hope I have exposed you to some of the specifics of Content Marketing Ideas and how to implement them on your website. If you enjoyed this blog let me know, and be sure to read the other blogs on every topic important to creating a great information hub around your website, social media and social sharing network.

Call or email us today:

Whether you have questions or need our help, please do not hesitate to contact us:

Professional Marketing Associates, Inc.

YourPMA.com

37 North Orange Ave

Suite 203B

Orlando, Florida 32801

Phone: 407-801-1PMA (1762)

or fill in contact info below.

At YourPMA, we pride ourselves in our commitment to detail and our motto which is:

Repetition + Reputation = Brand Recognition

When you contact us we help you with your most critical problem, the problem of time. Many companies today need to spend their time and energy in sales, customer service and delivery of the best product available to their customers. We make it easy, contact Your PMA and we become your marketing department, and we arrange and complete your marketing programs.

Whether it is Social Media set-up, follower growth and maintenance (we are top 5 in that area according to Orlando Business Journal) or video scripting and production, Your PMA can arrange it once you contact us.

Contact YourPMA today at (407) 801-1PMA(1762) to schedule an evaluation to see how we can help you become a celebrity in your industry. Customers buy from a name they know, “we make you famous in 6 months or less!” Then we keep you there, refreshed, current and relevant for years to come. all you need to do is contact us now!